Gee, I wonder why the stranger was reluctant to sell a dog back to the guy who had previously sold it to some random stranger at a liquor store and suddenly has $15000 bucks to burn. That's not weird or suspicious at all, right? And the transaction occurring at a liquor store just adds to how obviously on the up-and-up this whole thing is--that wouldn't leave anyone with the impression that you're, say, selling your dog for booze money rather than acting out of sincere concern for the dog's well-being. That man should have been thanking him for getting him into the doggy pawn shop business!

He didnt have money to feed the dog anymore. He sold it at $25 only. He says he walked away crying.

That sounds quite a good deal to me. I don't know how much meat would have been on the dog, but my understanding of 1970s US prices says you could probably eat, even in diners, for at least a week on $25, and without having somewhere to cook, you'd struggle to get that many meals from a small dog.

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And on the 3rd day,he saw the man coming with the dog.

And lo, he appeared before the man, and said "I am STALLONE thy saviour, and thou shalt giveth me thy dog!"

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Go gerrit.

I think that means the writer is from somewhere near Middlesbrough...?

But what gets me about all these This successful and/or famous person had it tough to, but they just kept trying and trying and eventually they succeeded glurges, is by the very nature, you only hear about the successful ones. There are more then likely many many people out there that keep trying and trying and never succeed.

A year ago, Sylvester Stallone had $106 in the bank. His wife was pregnant, his bull mastiff was starving and he couldn't pay the rent on his seedy Hollywood apartment. What to do?

Well, one answer was that Stallone, a sometime actor-turned-screenwriter, could sit down and in 3 1/2 days write a screenplay with a meaty starring role in it for himself, persuade someone to film it, and wind up a millionaire.

{ snip }

And the words Stallone is mouthing on screen are the words he wrote in 3 1/2 days and sold to producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff on the condition that he would play ''Rocky,'' and not Burt Reynolds, or James Caan, or Ryan O'Neal, who were being mentioned for the part.

{ snip }

Stallone sold a few scripts, mainly to television, before conceiving the idea of ''Rocky,'' which was inspired by an actual championship fight in 1975 between Chuck Wepner, know as ''The Bayonne Bleeder,'' and Muhammad Ali, the world champion.

{ snip }

From the beginning, Stallone intended to play ''Rocky.'' Although there was much interest in Hollywood for his script, the money men all wanted a name actor in the part. The bidding went up to $265,000, but Stallone refused to sell, unless he could play the lead.

In 1974 Stallone married actress Sasha Czack and they moved to California in the hope of building their acting careers. His first minor success came when he wrote the screenplay for the film, Lords of Flatbush (1974) with Henry Winkler, which he also co-starred in.

The actor was desperate for cash in the early days of his career, so put his beloved pooch up for sale - only to reacquire the hound after selling the script to his breakthrough film Rocky just a week later.

{ snip }

"He wanted to fight me and said he was gonna kill me - he was a crazy little person. I couldn't fight him - they'd arrest me - so I offered to pay double. Anyway, $3,000 and several threats later..."

"We came up with a tremendous publicity campaign," recalled Gabe Sumner, then head of marketing at UA. “It was about how this unknown guy named Sylvester Stallone walked into our office with a script and the company was prepared to buy the script, but Stallone said, 'I'm not going to sell it to you unless I star in the film.' And we (supposedly) said, 'No way.' And he said, ‘Well, you can’t have the script.’ And we said, ‘We will give you $18,000.’ And that was the figure we used. And a deal was made and Stallone could star in this film which he wrote. And he got all of $18,000. Now is this true? It was horsesh*t! But it worked. It promoted the whole underdog concept and kept on going.”

{ snip }

Representatives for Stallone said on Wednesday, “We stand by Sylvester Stallone’s story as the accurate truth.”

Now back o the OP.

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At some point, he got so broke that he stole his wife's jewellery and sold it. Things got so bad that he even ended up homeless. Yes, he slept at the New York bus station for 3 days.

I can't find a single reputable site with these claims. Not even IMDb, which often has dubious trivia, makes these claims. The only place I can find them is at this glurgy site.

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Originally Posted by TallGeekyGirl

So... if you're poor, if you have a strong enough dream it's ok to steal and make porno movies?

I can't find any evidence that he stole anything and he made one soft-core porn movie (i.e., movie, not movies). I can't find any evidence that he made more than one.

The thing about Stollone is the first films in any of his series are quite good. Not quite my thing but they had a message. "Rocky" won all those awards. "Rambo" was trying to make a point about the treatment of Vetnam vets (we watched for english at school, I can't remember what topic we were doing). Both charactors had battles to fight and were "real" it is the sense they had struggles. It was the endless sequels were he became a superhero type charactor that has made him a bit of a joke, in mho.

The thing about Stollone is the first films in any of his series are quite good. Not quite my thing but they had a message. "Rocky" won all those awards. "Rambo" was trying to make a point about the treatment of Vetnam vets (we watched for english at school, I can't remember what topic we were doing). Both charactors had battles to fight and were "real" it is the sense they had struggles. It was the endless sequels were he became a superhero type charactor that has made him a bit of a joke, in mho.

This. First Blood is actually a very good movie. Something for everyone - action with a message (the message being "don't be a d!ck to a stranger; you don't know what he can do").

Looking at IMDB, his "porn" movie was 1970; 1974 was "The Lord's of Flatbush"; 1975 was "Death Race 2000"; 1976 was "Rocky". In between these were a lot of TV parts, movies I've never heard of, etc. 14 listings total between 70 and 76. Even if most of these were paid minimally, I can see him struggling; I can't see him homeless in a New York bus terminal selling his dog for food. Now, I could see him needing to get rid of a bull mastiff; those damned things eat A LOT!

BTW - it sure as hell had better have taken more than 20 hours to write the script; even the first draft. If he could write a movie in that little time, he would be the most prolific screenwriter EVER!

what gets me about all these This successful and/or famous person had it tough to, but they just kept trying and trying and eventually they succeeded glurges, is by the very nature, you only hear about the successful ones. There are more then likely many many people out there that keep trying and trying and never succeed.

This. This this this.

Also "take risks! look at these rich people who took risks and how it paid off!" -- often combined with sneering at broke people who took risks that didn't pay off. Apparently, if it works out, it's an intelligent well-reasoned necessary risk to take, and poor people are poor because they're unwilling to take such risks; but if it doesn't work out and leaves the person poor, then it's their fault that they're poor because they made the wrong choices.